The War
by Story Please
Summary: They say the war against Voldemort has been won, but that does not mean that there are no more battles that must be fought. Sometimes, finding comfort is only possible when one makes a number of bad decisions...


Author's Note: There has been a horrible lack of smutty sexy fluffy angst in my stories lately, so I aim to remedy that, stat! Oh, right, so that means sexytimes ahead. Enjoy!

* * *

The War

The war is over.

They all say it's the truth.

She keeps telling herself it's true as they bury the bodies.

She keeps telling herself it's true when she fights for no reason with the people she loves.

She keeps telling herself it's true when she packs a bag one night and leaves the magical world behind.

She walks in the shadows, a Notice Me Not charm over her body. It's a habit, now. She does not wish to be seen, not even by herself. Sometimes, when the wind shifts, she thinks she can hear people calling her name. She bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from turning around and going back to them.

She is tired of telling everyone that she is fine.

She is tired of waking up and choking back a scream.

She is tired of an empty bed and slammed doors.

She sits in the back of the pub nursing the fifth beer of the night. The world spins pleasantly, and her mind is no longer thinking of darker things. This isn't like her. This isn't like her at all.

She wonders what, exactly, that means.

She goes home with someone.

She goes home with someone else.

She goes home alone.

She works days at temporary positions that she does not care about. She doesn't mind the Muggle monotony. It provides enough for her to have a tiny flat and food in the kitchen and enough extra for a new book or a movie when she wants it. And enough alcohol to stop thinking when she doesn't want to have to.

She drinks when she gets home.

She drinks when the bad memories come.

She drinks until she forgets.

It's a bad habit. She knows this, but she needs it. She's coping...badly. It's better than the alternative, though. At least, that's what she tells herself when she takes hangover potion in the morning. One night, she's giggling as she tries to do a crossword puzzle at a table, three empty pint glasses sitting across from her. She only looks up when she hears the glasses being pushed to the side.

"Mind if I sit here?" he says, and her heart clenches in recognition.

"Sit somewhere else," she says, afraid to look at him.

"The other tables are taken," he replies softly. "Please."

This makes her pause. Maybe she's mixing memory and reality again. He's dead, he's dead, he's dead, repeats over and over in her mind She does that sometimes especially after she's put away a few drinks. So she nods at him.

"Are you...doing a crossword?" he asks, and she giggles despite herself.

"I'm attempting to do a crossword!" she replies, laughing. She shows him how her hand refuses to write in a straight line and shrugs helplessly. "The page just won't stay still, I guess."

She looks up, and his face is somewhat blurry, the way that faces always get when she's in her cups. She likes how it softens features and makes it easier for her to get close to others. She craves touch, but her sober mind can't bear it. So it is only now, in the amber haze of a wicked buzz, that she can get what she needs without having to pay tribute to her insecurities and fears and inconvenient traumas.

"Here, let me help you." He stands up, and comes around to the other side of the booth and scoots next to her. It is then that she realizes that he's got a small glass of something clear and obviously potent in one hand.

"Hmmhmmm," she hums happily as he scoots close enough for their sides to touch. As he starts to do the crossword, she leans her head against his shoulder, which is somewhat awkward since he is so much taller than she is.

Her skin tingles where it contacts with him and she feels almost pleasantly sleepy though there's something about him that makes her body thrum with excitement as well.

"A four letter word for desiring something. Hmmm, and what might that be?" His voice really is heavenly.

"How about lust?" she says, her fingers curling around his narrow thigh.

"Agreed," he replies, and she can see how he sways slightly in his seat, his fingers clumsily slipping up her leg in a way that makes her belly flip-flop. He's at least as gone as she is, and this makes her feel like a coconspirator.

It is dark and intimate in their little corner, but even she isn't drunk enough to allow anything more significant than a little footsie and some meaningful touches pass between them.

Eventually, the crossword is left alone on the table with the empty glasses, and they get a cab together.

* * *

His flat is small and dark and utilitarian from what she can see. The door shuts softly behind them, and they stand in the little entryway, their fingers hovering over one another.

He kisses her, then, and it burns with the fire of whatever he's been drinking. She likes it so much that after she comes up for air, she kisses him again. She wonders, briefly, if it reflects badly on her to go home with someone whose name she doesn't know and who does not know hers.

But then she realizes it doesn't matter, and besides, there's something about him that makes her think that he is achingly familiar.

He wraps his long arms around her and she sighs with pleasure, kissing him more deeply. She feels so protected, and his scent makes her feel still and calm. They stumble awkwardly into the front room, and snog desperately on the couch. Then, as clothing begins to come off, he's licking and sucking on her breasts and her belly and her hips and lower still until in no time at all she's moaning sharply in release.

"You're so beautiful when you come," he says thickly, kissing her and she tastes herself on his lips.

"Only for you," she replies, and it's true. She's got a bad track record for being able to come in the presence of others, sober or not. She giggles, trying to make it sound less important than it actually is.

"It is my honor," He says, chuckling low.

She climbs on top of him, desire burning in her belly, and she does him the same favors. He moans long and loud when she wraps her lips around his cock, and she can tell that he's struggling to hold on.

"Oh, no," he says, holding her shoulders as she moves, "I...I won't last…"

She takes this as a challenge and moves faster.

He makes a half-hearted attempt to stop her, but it becomes very obvious that she's doing a good job. With a cry that is almost a shout, he comes and she swallows it all and kisses his lips as he pants and shakes in exhaustion.

"No...I...I'll be right back," he says, after he's caught his breath, "I can't disappoint you."

"Why not?" she asks, "I'm just some bird you've picked up from a pub."

"A crossword genius, remember?" he says, and her heart twinges with affection.

"You don't have to push yourself," she says, worrying that she'll sober up enough to start crying again.

"Only for you," he says, echoing her statement from earlier.

She sticks out her tongue at him and he smirks back. She sees him unstopper something and drink it and idly wonders why he'd have a potion bottle and not some conventional medication, when it strikes her that perhaps he is also a wizard.

"Well? Is that your wand, or are you just happy to see me?" she asks, when he returns to her and kisses and pets her body until she feels that she will go mad if he doesn't fuck her.

"If this is what you are referring to," he says, grinning wickedly as he presses his erection against her belly, "then I can assure you that it's very magical indeed."

They stumble into the bedroom together, and fall over sideways onto the bed, and she nearly hits her head on the wall and they laugh when they bump noses, and she kisses the tip of his nose and he kisses hers and they are moving together and in the shadowy room he is naked and beautiful above her, and he whispers to her how naked and beautiful she is beneath him.

She talks dirty to him as he moves inside of her, her voice cracking as the pleasure grows brighter inside of her until she is seeing stars. She can tell from the sounds that he makes that he is seeing them too.

It is unlike anything she has ever felt, and in the haze of her buzzing mind, she bucks back against him savoring the sensation of his legs pressing against the sides of her thighs.

She feels so, so safe. And so, so good. And as his body slides back and forth against hers; so, so full.

She has never really believed in the concept of coming together. It's something from cliche movies or romance novels. But he makes her come hard and fast and then follows her moments later, and she can't help but think that this shared moment of bliss must be what it is like to be fictional.

She wishes that it was. That her suffering was something someone had come up with, and not something so painfully real.

"That was better than beer," she whispers, as they lie twisted in the sheets, their bodies flushed and sated in the dark.

"I am inclined to agree," he replies, and they pull the duvet up to their chins and sleep.

* * *

It is dark when she stumbles out of his bed and grabs her things, then Apparates home. She's sober enough not to splinch herself and she's also sober enough to know that she's let a complete stranger fill her with semen on one of her less than safe days, and that's not even beginning to think of the various other diseases that one can contract She brews the potion with shaking hands, and chugs down a double dose. It makes her nauseous, which only fills her with paranoia, even though she knows logically that there's no way for her to be pregnant.

'I'm a mess,' she thinks, 'and there is no way I am bringing a child into it."

It's the first responsible thought she's had in months.

Still, she finds herself back in the pub that night, crossword in hand, and she takes in four pints due to nervousness. She is nearly certain that she will never see him again, when she feels him press into the seat beside her and she leans against him, sighing happily.

"I missed you," she says, forgetting to be nervous.

"I missed you, too," he replies, but he does not say anything about her leaving his bed without saying anything. "Also, I wanted to give you something. I feel terrible about...my lack of etiquette."

He hands her something under the table and when she looks at it, she quickly shoves it in her pocket. "How did you know I wasn't a Muggle?"

"I had my suspicions," he replies. "The loud crack of Apparation from one's bathroom does seem a rather obvious clue."

"I...went home to brew a potion to...make sure I was safe." She stops to take breaths to keep her thoughts in order.

"Clever girl," he says, and she feels a thrill of happiness at his praise.

They leave the pub before they can complete more than two crossword clues.

* * *

This time, she is on top of him, all courage and energy as she unbuttons his shirt. He takes her hands in his. "Let's go to the bedroom. I have...unpleasant scars."

She kisses his neck and collarbones, feeling the ridges of scar tissue without issue and then she kisses his lips gently, looking into his dark, widened eyes. "They are part of you, and you are lovely."

He lets her see them, then, in the meager lamplight. She kisses them and he twitches in pleasure at the kind touch. She has been scarred in the war, too, and she knows his pain.

"Fair's fair," she giggles, as she pulls her top off. "You can see mine."

He traces his finger over the scar on her arm and kisses it gently until she gasps. Then he travels down to the one that crosses down her lower chest and belly. It is a faint, white line by now, but it will always be there as a reminder of her foolish decision to fight Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries. He runs his tongue down its length and kisses it all the way back up.

When they finally have sex again, it is more like lovemaking than any sex she's ever had before; Ron included.

She falls asleep in his arms and he wraps his leg around her as well, and realizes that, yet again, she's forgotten to tell him her name.

* * *

She wakes up in the darkness and her head hurts. She pulls away from him to get dressed, to escape before the neurotic hell of her sober mind can ruin the one good thing in her life.

"Please, don't go," he rasps, his hand gentle on the small of her back. She wants to melt into that touch— those permanently warm hands.

"How do you know you'd like me when you're sober?" she says, and then softly she adds, "I know that I don't."

"Please. At least tell me your name, how I can get in touch with you again."

And there it is, sitting weightily between them. He's never asked before. Maybe, before, when it was just a casual hookup, it didn't matter. Or maybe they'd both been drunk enough not to need it.

But now…

"Do you really want to know?" she asks, "And possibly risk losing...this? These nights?"

"Please…" His voice is soft and insistent, but it is his touch that convinces her. His fingers can somehow convey his level of need from the way they rest against her skin, and she wants so badly to do as he asks.

"Hermione," she says, flinching when his fingers withdraw abruptly. "Hermione Granger."

He is silent, and she takes it as rejection, grabbing her things and Apparating away in the middle of the room without bothering to get dressed as she holds back tears.

* * *

The splinch hurts her, but it's only a little skin on her knee, and she is able to heal it up fairly quickly even though it stings painfully until she's finished the spell. She showers, then, and scrubs herself raw. Anything to forget the scent of him, and how much she's begun to crave it...

She dresses for bed, then takes a dose of contraceptive potion again, and remembers belatedly of the vial in her pocket. She takes it out and looks at it in the light— the color is perfect, maybe somehow more than perfect. She places it on her bedside table and looks at it until she falls back asleep.

* * *

She doesn't drink that night. She stays in her room, staring at the vial. She grabs a book off the dusty, neglected shelf, and begins to read. When she falls asleep, it is not as late as after coming home from a night at the pub, but she feels somehow more tired than she is after drinking.

Every time she thinks about going to the pub, her mind immediately goes to the feeling of him pressed against her side doing the crossword with her. Of his moans when he was at her mercy. Of his hand at the small of her back…

She gets to work.

She steels herself and Vanishes her alcohol stores. The pub is off limits. She has been coping badly for months, using alcohol as a crutch not to deal with her problems. But no matter how much she runs, she knows she will never be able stop until she faces the things she is trying to avoid.

She has to go through at least three therapists before she finds one who specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy who will help her work through her trauma. Blessedly, after a few weeks of sessions, she is down to one nightmare a week or less. She forces herself to go to St Mungo's and have her cursed scar looked at. They send her home with bandages and a salve that will minimize the scarring and the pain she feels when the weather shifts.

She begins going to Diagon Alley, stepping her toe in little by little back into the Wizarding World. She writes painful letters to Harry and Ron and Luna and Ginny and Neville, with a brief description of her time away and asking for a little space as she finds herself again.

* * *

It is nearly three months after the night she told her mystery man her name, and she still dreams about his legs pressing against her thighs and wakes up wanting him.

She is at The Sorcerer's Stacks, a new bookstore on the opposite end of Diagon Alley. She's in the Alchemy section when she hears someone clear their throat behind her. A familiar scent curls around her; reassuring and pulling at her heartstrings.

She turns, and goes pale with shock.

There, looming over her, is—

"Professor?" she manages.

He is wearing a dark gray set of robes, and it makes him look softer, more human than the frightening Headmaster she'd seen in the papers while on the run. His hair is longer, and loosely tied back away from his face. His throat is covered with a long, plush scarf, but she knows intimately what the scar underneath feels like against her lips.

"Please," he says, in that soft, insistent way that makes her heart ache. "Before you run away, I would like to explain myself. Perhaps in a less...public place?"

She nods, and he gives her his arm. They Apparate out of the store together, and when she opens her eyes, they are on a high, grassy hill overlooking a small wood.

"I come here to think, sometimes," he says, by way of explanation.

"I'm not sure why you would want to talk to me. I thought you wouldn't want me...not after you found out who I was," she says, staring at the ground. "I guess now I know why."

"That's not—" He frowns and paces a bit. "I didn't mean it like that. I was...shocked."

"I got help," she says, trying to control her breathing so that she doesn't begin to panic, "I don't have to drink to solve my problems anymore, even though sometimes I feel like it would make it easier."

"I must confess that, after that night, I quit cold turkey. I can't bear to touch a drop knowing—"

"That you fucked a former student?" she finishes, almost relishing how he winces.

"It isn't that, though I likely would never have considered it had I known to begin with," he says, looking mortified, "but...I...I've never…."

"Just tell me, already!" she said, growing heated, "I don't think my heart can take much more of this!"

"What do you mean?" he asks, his voice neutral.

"I mean that I loved every minute I was with you until the moment you decided that I wasn't good enough because I'm Hermione-fucking-Granger!" She cries out, surprised at the vitriol in her words. "But I'm sober now, so I guess that having my heart torn out after it was already damaged from a bloody war was good for something."

'Don't you care that I'm—"

"That you're what?" she interrupts, rounding on him and making quotation marks with her fingers. "A former headmaster who killed the headmaster before him? A former teacher who took points away from everyone and was mean? Why does any of that matter after what we shared?"

"I didn't mean it like that, Hermione." He meets her gaze and looks unblinkingly into her eyes. His expression is tinged with remorse and it takes her a moment to realize that he's called her by her first name.

"How did you mean it, then?"

Her heart thuds as he steps closer to her, his body language hesitant, as though he expects to be slapped. Finally, he places his hands on her shoulders. "I meant it like this."

He presses his lips to hers and her knees nearly buckle at the sudden nearness of him. His scent and the warmth of his arms as they curl around her body make her feel safe and warm. She's always sort of worried that now, without the benefit of beer goggles, that she will find that her feelings had been enhanced by drink; that they would, in fact, be lackluster in the light of day.

She is, therefore, so very, very glad to have been wrong.

He kisses her deeply enough to make her toes curl and the hunger he has for her is matched kiss by kiss. The urgency of her need for him is reciprocated enough that, when she whispers into his mouth, "here?" he can only moan back. She spreads her cape on the grass and sinks down onto it. He isn't far behind— they roll and play, reacquainting one another with their bodies and the pleasure to be found therein. She is warm and wet and ready for what feels like years before he finally presses into her, filling her at last.

"I missed this," she gasps, and she knows she won't last long. He tries to hold himself back as well, but she grabs him with her legs, wrapping them around him, driving him deeper into her. He groans long and low as he tries to stop himself, to wait for her orgasm. He is stubborn. Every time he stops, it makes it that much harder for her to find her own release. She begins to wonder how she can push past his resolve. As she racks her brain for solutions, she remembers the headline of the Daily Prophet- the one where he'd been named headmaster. It had posted his full name there, hadn't it? She thinks back, willing herself to remember.

He opens his eyes as she stills underneath him, his expression one of wanting release and trying hard to deny himself. "Hermione?"

"Come for me, Severus," she whispers, looking up at him with crimson need burning in her eyes.

It is too much for him to bear. With a final quick movement, he moves hot and slick inside of her and it is she who follows his orgasm, pulsing hard around him as he finishes filling her to the brim with cum.

* * *

A year later, it feels almost surreal to think of the gray, blurry mess her life used to be. The thought of running away from hardship makes her wonder why she thought it would ever work at all. She's working at the book shop, and he at the apothecary down the street. They're saving to open a rare artifacts shop down the street from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and they have both been named godparents three times over. She is still not sure how to feel about being godmother to little Scorpius Malfoy, but most things feel simply...right.

* * *

It is morning.

He is in her bed.

No.

No, that is not quite right.

They are in their bed.

The rightness of that thought settles in her belly like a smooth warm stone.

He pulls her closer and carefully wraps his leg around her thigh, and she squeaks with happiness at the enduring security of his touch. It is true that this has never changed, but now she remembers each moment with a clarity that her drunken mind could never have managed.

It is a gift, she thinks. All of this. A second chance to do it all over, only better this time.

"Severus?" she says softly, and when she shifts to look at him, his gaze is upon her with the same dark intensity that she has come to adore beyond words.

"Yes?" he says breathily, his warm rumble hiding behind the softness of his voice.

"I was thinking...in the fall, after the ceremony…after the shop is ours..." she trails off, worried to put her thoughts into words. Her eyes cut over to the perfect contraceptive potion he gave her all those months ago before even knowing her name. It's no longer safe to use for its intended purpose, but it's become a memento, and it looks pretty hanging by a chain in the window The shimmering sapphire liquid catches the light of the morning sun and reflects tiny rainbows on the wall.

His hand trails down her breast and comes to rest on her abdomen. "No more contraceptive potions?" he asks, his voice husky. She can feel his cock stirring against her lower back.

She hums her agreement and he begins to kiss her neck until she turns in his arms and finds his lips with hers, the pleasure growing with each breath, each touch.

He slips her knickers down her hips gently and she scoots back to help him in his conquest, and before long, they are connected again and again, her mind wandering to the thought of the future, a future of their simple ceremony on the cliffs, of their business, of Severus at her side forever, and…

She bites her lip and opens her eyes, letting him in. There are some things that even she cannot say aloud while he is fucking her so slow and deliberately first thing in the morning. She caresses his jaw, loving the look of surprise on his eyes as she lets him see the mental images in her head.

"Oh, is that so?" he moans, his hips shaking as he tries to control himself. He firmly presses his hand against her abdomen as he thrusts forward and she gasps with the pleasure of it. "Oh, I shall relish knocking you up once the time comes."

She blushes scarlet, but she can't help it— she grins. "Are you sure? With me?"

"I would like nothing more," he says, kissing her forehead. "I won't last with the dirty things going through your head and offered so freely."

In the end, he begs her to come for him, to set him free, and she cannot help but give him all he asks. Moments later, he calls out her name, and her heart skips a beat as he describes the naughty things he aims to do with her in their future.

After, they both lie boneless in the afterglow of release.

After, she turns to him and gives him a heavy-lidded look full of love.

After, he whispers, "I am the luckiest man alive."

They were right.

The war is over.


End file.
